Details
by Celrevia
Summary: Eriol has slipped into his final hours. How cold is it after your first life? Angsty short ficlet, no pairings.


Author Note: Posted this in my live journal ( ) but, I doubt you've read it so you wouldn't know. Well, here it is, in all its angst glory. "Eriol angst?" you ask. Yep, Eriol angst, deal with it.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, only the words. 

Details

  
  
Eriol doesn't remember living anymore. He just knows he's been dead for a very long time and all the details have been slipping through his fingers, slowly, like the grains of sand that are slipping down the hour glass as he watches. 

  
Eriol does not remember going to sleep recently; he's been too busy. 

  
School, which he doesn't need, has occupied him until now. Kaho, who he doesn't love, has not yet given up on loving him even if she is a million destinies apart. His heart, which was his last solace, has abandoned him to the cold. All he has left is magic, secrets, and rattling breaths that are also dying. He can not remember a lot of the details now. They are blurring together. The big picture is lost; the little ones, have all but faded into old watercolors and unwinding tapestries.

  
But… 

  
Eriol can still remember things of the near past, time has given him enough of itself just to let him warp it to his will. He likes to remember the sweat memories of his childhood, or rather, of Clow's childhood. He is leading himself into denial, blending his two lives in hopes of masking all the little missing pieces. He acts as if he were sipping fine wine, slowly savoring taste and appearance. But a glass of wine can only lead to an empty shell, and an empty glass does not sustain the bittersweet memoirs of old. 

  
Eriol doesn't have the time or energy to buy another bottle of champagne nor a bottle of wine nor even a cheap bottle of whatever liquid will kill him fastest. He does not like the taste of alcohol anymore; it is killing him too slowly for his own tastes.

  
Time is slowing…

  
He does not know how long he has been in the chair. It smells like sweat, dust, and leather. There is a sheen of sweat on Eriol's forehead as he remembers the warmth of before. 

  
And how terribly it burns him, now!

  
_"Eriol-kun, you look tired, are you tired?"_

  
He had remembered saying that he had been fine. That cold, wicked, smile had played on the stone that was now his face and he had turned around. Now, now he wished he had just spoken of the darkness that was to swallow him up like a bat swallows the moth. Now he was going to be swallowed, and not a single soul would know.

  
He has been dead for a long time now. He remembers dying. Surrounded by two seemingly emotionless beings that he had created. Clow, he corrected himself bitterly, He had created them. And now they belonged to someone who would live longer than a flicker of a shadow.

  
Eriol had wondered about it before, he had wondered about it since he had been "born". He still remembered his birth, barely, but he remembered. 

  
Suddenly coming to life as a ten-year old boy. Cold flesh on even colder pavement. Lights rebounding off naked skin and an even barer mind; vehicles honking, people yelling, and then blissful blankness. He did not remember learning. He did not remember aging. He did not remember traveling. He did not remember even obtaining clothes, food, or the ability to speak. 

  
But somehow he had come here, which seemed so very far from where he had started in the darkness. And now? Now he was back to square one. Back to cold pavement and cold shadows of beings that swayed in his vision like ghosts.

  
He had tried once, tried to explain to these ghosts of his that he was still alive. But as all good spirits were, he was in denial.

  
Now?

  
Now, Eriol stays in his room, with his cold red armchair and colder creations. He looks into the fire and remembers a past that was only moments ago and wonders if he will disappear as suddenly as he was born.

  
Eriol wonders if his second death will be as cold as the first and knows that it will be even colder. 

  
The details are slipping from his hands so slowly and it's only a matter of time. The hourglass had tipped over and all the sand had spilled out. There was blood on his fingertips and for the first time in two lifetimes, it wasn't anyone else's. The glass was cutting him, and he couldn't feel it.

  
He had wondered about it before. 

  
Now he knew and now… now he was too tired to fight.

  
Eriol had been alive once, but now… all the details are lost.

  
There was no more time left.

  
Finite 


End file.
